Choose a manufactured metal object, such as a metal weapon or a suit of heavy or medium metal armor, that you can see within range. You cause the object to glow red-hot. Any creature in physical contact with the object takes 2d8 fire damage when you cast the spell. Until the spell ends, you can use a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns to cause this damage again.
If a creature is holding or wearing the object and takes the damage from it, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can. If it doesn’t drop the object, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the start of your next turn.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 2nd.
* - (a piece of iron and a flame)
Can two players with this spell affect one creature?
Could you cast this on a bag of ball bearings to create rough terrain (the floor is lava) or lob at enemies for an AOE effect?
Needs note that it's also available for Clockwork Sorceror (UA)
I believe the rules say that if two of the same spell is cast, only use the most potent.
No; you could cast it on a single ball bearing.
If I cast it on the metal blade part of my own spear and I handle it from the wooden part, can I make a 1d6 piercing + 2d8 fire damage to an enemy without make me damage or make a Con saving throw? The rule says "Any creature in physical contact with the object.." I will not take contact with the metal but the enemy will.
Raw: yes, but it would require a bonus action to do the damage unless the spear was already in the enemy when you cast the spell. However, wood does not take kindly to being in contact with red-hot metal.
So, you essentially cook a warrior to death dealing 2d8 fire damage every turn.
This spell will instantly put any good aligned character's alignment into question, it's pretty gruesome.
Is the floor manufactured?🙂
If some one is in cart can i use this spel to light it on fire and do damage?
Casting word is:
Actinium Seerus Ignitium
What if an enemy wields more than one weapon? Surely two casters using heat metal could cast it on each weapon and disarm them or do double damage.
In case you were wondering: Creatures and Constructs are not Objects, and cannot be targeted (directly) by this spell regardless of how much metal their bodies contain.
So for example, RAW, Heat Metal cannot directly target Warforged, metal golems, animated armor, steel defenders (artificer's companions), etc.
Just a thought, but can an Battle Smith artificer cast this on their steel defender and have them grapple an enemy? Or would it damage the steel defender too?
What is the point of the Con save? The disadvantage is based on if the target drops the object or not. It doesn't say you must make a Con save to drop the object...
I have a feeling it should be:
If a creature is holding or wearing the object and takes the damage from it, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can. If it fails the save and doesn't drop the object, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the start of your next turn.
So if you make the save, you can keep the object and not have disadvantage to your rolls. If you fail the save, you can either keep the object and have disadvantage, or drop it.
I was looking around and found that DND Beyond has “Heat Metal”, yet not “Chill Metal”, what’s with that?
you can't choose not to drop it, as long as you are wearing/ carrying the object you have disadvantage. the "if it doesn't drop it" is focused towards objects that can't be dropped such as worn items or, for some creatures, metal weapons/parts that are permanently attached to them.
you can either use this spell to impose disadvantage on the target's attacks or force them to drop their weapon/object/McGuffin
This is quite a powerful spell. But DM's should not moan, their job is to run a fun game. If you want to deter players using the spell make monsters clever enough to know whats happening.
I.e party are fitting a evil band of knights. Bard cast Heat Metal on boss knights plate mail.. ouch he says, and then kill the Bard, others target Bard trying to kill him or end concentration.
Next time less likely to use it...
It's a good question, but I think it makes sense that no "Chill Metal" spell exists (and of course you can always use a homebrew spell if you disagree).
So, if you're going to try to drop some metal's temperature to the point where it would cause semi-permanent damage to a living creature upon contact (within ~6 seconds), it's going to take a lot of energy to do so. Lowering the temperature of an object is incredibly difficult without significantly lowering the temperature of its surroundings to a similar degree (pardon the pun). As an example, just take a look at how long it took humans to discover a way to reliably heat food/water (fire) vs. a way to reliably chill food/water (refrigeration). Another way to think about it is that while heat/fire is virtually uncapped in how hot it can get, frost/freezing is limited in how cold it can get because of "absolute zero." (Of course, some people like to argue about whether or not this is theoretically true, but it's generally accepted that this is the case - after all, how do you make a molecule have "less movement" if it's already completely still?) Anyways, the point of all this is to say that if you're going to be expending that much magical energy, you may as well use it to cast something like cone of cold.
Granted, this explanation *is* based almost exclusively off of real-world physics, so it's all pretty arbitrary once magic gets introduced, anyway. I'd like to think that a "Chill Metal" spell would simply take a higher spell slot and start at the appropriate damage or maybe more for game balance (e.g. 6th-level spell staring at 6d8 cold damage, etc.), but eh, it really doesn't matter. Do whatever is most fun for you.
TL;DR Because WotC just didn't include it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This isn't brought up at all but what about magical items? Such as a magic metal sword or shield. Would heat metal have the same effect on them or would the item itself get some sort of save? RAW i would assume it would react exactly as regular metal item. But RAI i would think there might be some difference. Anyone got 2 cents on this?